Narcissism in the Age of Technology

Kostas Maronitis received his PhD on immigration, media, and social reorganization from the University of Greenwich. He now teaches European cultural studies at Lancaster University. His research interests include cultural and media theory, immigration, and social integration.

The sweeping celebration of social media for their role in the re-creation of community bonds as well as for the political mobilizations in Iran and the Arab nations has generated a series of critical responses. Evgeny Morozov's (2011) attack on the myth of free information and its liberating potential and Nicholas Carr's (2010) concerns over the way the net is fostering distraction and ignorance are indicative of a growing critical trend. Surprisingly, the latest installment in this series of critiques comes from Sherry Turkle's Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Once an advocate for the decentralization of identity in virtual communities, Turkle appears to be skeptical about our overreliance on technology for care, communication, and self-representation.

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Turkle implicitly attempts to recontextualize Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations(1979)...